Obama trip: Style over substance

SEOUL, South Korea — President Barack Obama returns from his maiden Asian swing with none of the concrete accomplishments that White Houses typically put in place before big trips, setting up a stark test for his idealistic theory that the United States should act more like a wise neighbor than a swaggering superpower.

Obama’s minimalist approach was most consequential in China, where he did not meet with Christians, dissidents or bloggers, or directly challenge his hosts for repressive tactics that are again on the rise.

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The Chinese in turn rebuffed longstanding U.S. concerns – whether on human rights, Iran or currency policy – in a heavily stage-managed visit where China, not Obama, clearly sought the upper hand.

It’s an approach that carries great risk for Obama – playing straight into his critics’ accusations that his new, more multilateral style isn’t paying dividends, and worse, is making him look weak and ineffectual abroad.

“They don’t want this narrative that the U.S. is a declining power and China is a rising power, and the trip just reinforced that,” said Adam Segal, a senior fellow on China at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The sense of the trip was, ‘We’re not here to get in their face about these things.’”

Add to that the fact the main image of Obama abroad that really broke through to the American public out of the trip – Obama bowing to the Japanese emperor – didn’t exactly reinforce the image of a muscular leader abroad.

But there were substantive problems as well. An early test drive of Obama’s policy of engaging rivals and adversaries around the globe suffered a setback Wednesday, when Iran defied Washington and rejected a United Nations call for the regime to send enriched uranium abroad for processing, which would inhibit the building of nuclear weapons.

That plan was sort of Obama’s ace-in-the-hole for dealing with Iran – and success would have been vindication for his approach to talk to the Iranian regime “without preconditions,” as he said during the campaign. Now Obama is roughly back where President George W. Bush often found himself, trying to rally world support to crack down on an intransigent Iran.

Ironically, the disappointment did give Obama a chance to show he has a spine. At his final diplomatic event of the trip, a two-question news conference with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Obama sounded like a stern parent when he said: “We have begun discussions with our international partners about the importance of having consequences.”

Through it all, the White House says it’s not concerned.

After the press conference, U.S. reporters surrounded White House senior adviser David Axelrod, who said the goal of the trip “was to lay a foundation for economic progress, to open up markets for American goods, to lay a foundation for progress on mutual security issues…to lay groundwork on climate change.”

“Though the President is demonstrably popular in all these countries and polling reflects that, we didn't come halfway across the world for ticker-tape parades,” Axelrod said. “So we believe it was a successful trip.”

In “key points” on the trip provided to reporters, a senior administration official contended: “American leadership was absent from this region for the last several years, despite the fact that it is increasingly central to our economic growth and our security. President Obama put our alliances on a firmer footing, reasserted our leadership in the region, and continued to advance a complicated bilateral relationship with China that will play a large role in shaping the 21st century.”

Axelrod said the White House recognized “didn't have expectations that Barack Obama arrives in China or anywhere else and things change overnight.”